Thursday, 2 April 2009

APPLICATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF WEB 2.0

APPLICATIONS AND CHARACTERISTIC OF WEB 2.0.

Talking about the advances that have erupted rapidly in the 21st century in the technology.
There was another great advance and that was the birth of web that is the World Wide Web (www).in the early 1990’s. (Whithead, Taylor et al 1994). Researches carried on in this sector and the simple architecture and the open standards of the web has been transformed or grown into a vast distributed, diverse information and application platform. It is the current phase of the web that we are experiencing.

This new advent is known as Web 2.0. It is basically a revolutionary way of gathering, organizing and sharing of information. It has gain considerable importance in todays society.
It can be said as a renewal, or a new generation all together of the internet where the user’s content has a central place.

Osimo and Burgelman (2007) states “Web 2.0 is about both technology and attitude”. Miller (2005) described Web 2.0 as follows: “Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices”

Now let us discuss and also compare the various characteristics of the Web 2.0

Web 2.0 applications have generic character, i.e not specified to a particular topic or area .An example of such an application is Google Earth.

Applications of web 2.0 also have specific character i. e specified to a particular topic like for example tfl.gov.uk which is specified for the transport and the routes in London only.

It also shows static as well as dynamic characteristics.

Static characteristics of the Web 2.0 can be well described with the example of You tube where one can view songs or even self made movies or videos that are uploaded by other users .Dynamic characteristic is well described by Yahoo messenger where one can live chat and also exchange pictures and documents from users .

Another application characteristic that is supported by Frissen (2008) is the closed environment characteristic of the Web 2.0 .An example is orkut.com which has a feature of hiding your scrapbook or your pictures from being viewed by other people.

Open environment is also another characteristic where there is an open environment where people can have access freely .An example is the Namedatabase.com where you can search for people by typing their names.

There is another characteristic of the Web 2.0 that is applications can be personal .An example is the blog, I created for publishing my articles and also sharing my personal viewpoint with others. This characteristic is supported by Wyld (2007).

Now let us also discuss about the way in which Web 2.0 is useful for the people.

It can be used to share and exchange information.

It can also be used to inform people about something.

It can also be used as a virtual medium to meet each other virtually .an example is Second Life.

It is also used nowadays for shopping online .an example is ebay .com

It is also being used for gambling and betting .an example is betfair.com

Now let us take an example of Web 2.0

Podcasting: It is basically is a two word concept merged into one .Pod comes from Apples ipod whereas Casting comes from broadcasting, which basically means sending a radio signal. (Ormond, 2008).

It can be used by anyone having a microphone and an internet connection so that one can download audio files that could be downloaded by other users.

Example: Announcement made in hospitals regarding a drug that is needed or is out of stock.

Uses Of Podcasting: There are various uses of podcasting such as

It is being used for additional support in teaching and learning

For eg : taped lectures ,group presentations .

It can prove to be a help for students in pronouncing foreign languages by listening to the podcasted audio files.

Nowadays tourist attractions and also some of the museums are using podcasting .It is being used an electronic guides for the visitors.

There are also some benefits of podcasting such as

It enables users to perform other primary task while consuming audio content.

Typically users consume audio content on a mobile Mp3 or directly from the browser, both of these ways enables multitask opportunity for the users. (Owyang, 2006).

It is also beneficial for slow readers or pupil willing to learn via audio.



Refernces :

1: Anderson, K. M., Taylor, R. N., and Whitehead, E. J. 1994. Chimera: hypertext for heterogeneous software environments. ACM Hypertext , pg 94-107.

2: Osimo, D., and Burgelman,J.C. 2007, Web 2.0 for e-Government Why and How, 4th Ministerial e-Government Conference,Lisbon (presentation),.

3: Miller, P. 2005, Web 2.0: Building the New Library”, Ariadne, No. 45.

4: Frissen, V., et al. 2007, Naar een ‘User Generated State’? TNO, Delft,.

5: Wyld, D.C., 2007,The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0, IBM Center for The Business of Government, Washington (E-Government Series),.

6:Ormand.P ,2008,Podcasting Enhances Learning. Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges.

7: Owyang, J. 2006., Podcasting can be an ambient medium http://jeremiahthewebprophet.blogspot.com/2006/06/podcasting-can-be-ambient-medium.html.


Wednesday, 1 April 2009

MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Due to the level of competition that has grown considerably and also the demands of the market that are increasing day by day . Organizations now have to go an extra mile to be ahead or to be competitive enough to cope up with the rivals . In order to be ahead of the rivals or gain competitive advantage over the other organizations in the market . Organizations are on the hunt for new organizational structures that could improve their knowledge management because it is believed today in the corporate world or it is rather a fact that knowledge is an important asset in today’s world to gain advantage or be ahead in this tight organizational race . There is general agreement that knowledge management will represent the biggest competitive advantage for organizations in the new millennium . Drucker (1993),Quinn(1992). So managing knowledge in an organization is of utmost importance .

Ferrin-Urdaneta (1999) stated the KM system designed by an organization usually deals with three KM processes :Knowledge creation ,Knowledge legitimization and Knowledge sharing

Also when speaking about managing knowledge in an organization ,Firstly we have to speak about the users or people concerned with the management and also concepts like teams and communities .

Research has shown that organizations are increasingly carrying out knowledge processes through groups instead of individual’s . Groups are becoming the basic unit of work as described by Yager (1997).

Teams : There are many definitions of the word “team” Katzenback and Smith (1993) defines “a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose,performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable”.

Synergy is an important reason for creating a team stated by. Hackman (1990).

Communities : Recent researches have shown that nowadays the parent organizations are using communities within an organization for knowledge sharing to gain competitive advantages .Markus (1990) states “community as a group of individuals who communicate more within than across the boundaries of the group and share a common interest. “ .Communities have common objectives which satisfy some of the individuals need in the community .In addition they have low coordination and also have weaker ties among members and where no one is responsible or critical for the survival or accomplishment of objectives .

Knowledge management is managing the intangible assets of an organization (Sveiby, 1997).
Nonaka (1995) argued knowledge as tacit and explicit and believes knowledge is created in continuous conversion between tacit and explicit .He also introduced a model called SECI for knowledge creation which at the same time accomplished storage , legitimization , and also sharing of knowledge
The model consist of four processes (socialization, internalization, externalization, and combination).

And when speaking about KM processes that play an important role in managing knowledge in an organization ,We will discuss about the 3 processes

Creating, Legitimization AND Sharing.

Knowledge creation : Is basically a process where new insights are gain by individuals
Organizations are now using group collaboration rather than individual actions for planned knowledge creation . A team is more effective in knowledge creation as compared to communities in an organization

E.g
. We can say creation of knowledge in an organization as product innovation or a new organizational strategy design

Knowledge legitimization : There was a maxim “Seeing Is Believing “.but it was a thing of the past ,as we no longer believe everything we see (Ferrin-Urdaneta, 1999). It is the same when we read something new we tend to doubt it whether it is true or not and it is also the same way when people say certain facts we are not always convinced of their truthfulness .This testing of new knowledge is termed as ‘knowledge legitimization’
In this process the new knowledge is always tested before sharing. Here communities tend to have better effectiveness in legitimizing the knowledge created than a team.


Knowledge sharing : This starts at our home and from the day we are born,. Most commonplace(s) of knowledge sharing is our schools ,and it does not stop even after we graduate ,we keep on learning from our doings and every day experience .Organizations generally control knowledge creation and sharing by trying to create as much knowledge as they can. They can then share it among the stakeholders but at the same time stop sharing when it comes to competitors . In sharing of knowledge communities tend to be more beneficial and effective than teams .

While managing knowledge in an organization, the below are the three steps which must be followed

Knowledge first must be created or gained through experience

Knowledge must be legitimized

Finally it should be shared

So as it may be clear by now the processes involved in managing knowledge and the way the organization use their resources in managing knowledge .

Its the same way knowledge is managed in ebizel.com Pvt. Ltd an organization dealing in HR and IT .First we use to create knowledge by various learning’s and researches or carrying out field study ,then that knowledge is explained to the top associates of the organization where the new gained knowledge is questioned and then when it is accepted it is then shared with all the associates in the organization.

References :

1: Drucker, P. 1993. Post-Capital society. Harper & Collins, New York, NY,

2: Quinn, 1992. J. B. Intelligent Enterprise. The Free Press, New York, NY,

3: Yager, S. E. (1997) Everything’s coming up virtual. Crossroads Fall (1), 20-24.

4:Katzenbach, J. R., and D. K. Smith. 1993. The wisdom of teams.Creating the high-perfomuance orgunizution. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA,

5: Hackman, J. R. (1990) Groups that work and those that don’t.San Francisco,C A: Jossey-Bass

6: Sveiby, K. E. (1997) The new organizational wealth. Managing & measuring knowledge-bused assets. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA,

7: Nonaka, I., and H. Takeuchi (1995).The knowledge-creating company. How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovurion. Oxford University Press, New York, NY,

8:Ferran-Urdenta (1999) Organizational Structure for Knowledge Management SIGCPR New Orleans LA USA

Monday, 30 March 2009

IMPLEMENTING KM IN ORGANIZATIONS

Implementing knowledge management in organizations .

When speaking about implementing knowledge management in an organization I can clearly state that knowledge is one of the most important resource an organization has today . In today’s competing environment where the advances in I.T has considerably bridged the gap between competing companies ,the companies are using collective knowledge of the employees and also the feedbacks of the customers in order to produce competitive products to gain advantage .

The work carried out by various scholars have just provided more authority to the importance of knowledge in any organization. Likewise Zack(1999)stated “Business organisations are coming to view knowledge as their most valuable and strategic resource.” Nonaka(1998) also supports this , According to him in an economy the only certain thing is uncertainty and the one and only source of competitive advantage is knowledge So in today’s world the organization focus is more on the intellectual capital rather than tangible assets which was given more importance before. Now most managers feel that the critical source separating them from rivals is the knowledge asset and the intellectual capital of the employees , Liebowitz (2000).

When speaking about knowledge management in any organization We can say that firstly we need to draw a strategy so that it can be implemented in an organization . A knowledge management implementation strategy must be a function of the business strategy in order to accomplish the desired goals of the organization implementing the strategy .The KM strategy can thus be said as the resource of supplying knowledge to an organization in order to carry out its vision and also to achieve their goals .So the KM strategy must be aligned or you can say must fall within the business strategy of the organization which in turn will help to provide results that will ultimately give them a competitive advantage .

But it is not that KM strategies always satisfy the KM needs of the organizations because somewhere there lies a lack in cohesiveness across various approaches . Rubenstein, Montano et al,(2000) suggested the system thinking method which is basically viewing the complex processes in the organization and responding to the needs of the organization. Implementation of KM strategies have three categories .

Descriptive : describes KM, and also identifies the KM attributes that influences the success or failure of the approach taken .

Perspective : concerned with the type of KM procedures and not on how and when to carry out these procedures .

Hybrid : as the name suggests it is a mixture of both .

There is also a very important factor that affects the implementation of KM in organizations . It is that the employees and more importantly the top management officials are not very much committed with the implemented strategy.

Figure 1: KM model for Implementation (Sunassee & Sewry, 2003)

One more point is the culture and managing the cultural change when implementing KM in an organization . Employees contribution and their importance within the organization should be top most priority . Efforts should also be made so that the people feel part of the change when KM is implemented . Individual learning and innovative thinking within employees should also be encouraged .

Importance should also be given to the hardware and software which will be the medium for sharing and disseminate knowledge throughout the organization.

By following these guidelines we can implement KM in an organization effectively to obtain competitive advantage.

References:

1: ZACK, M.H. 1999a. Developing a Knowledge strategy. California Management Review, vol. 41, no. 3, 125-146.

2: NONAKA, I. 1998. The Knowledge-Creating Company. In Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management. Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston.

3: LIEBOWITZ, J. 2000. Building Organizational Intelligence: A Knowledge Management Primer. CRC Press, Boca Raton.

4: RUBENSTEIN-MONTANO, R., LIEBOWITZ, J., BUCHWALTER, J., AND MCGRAW, D. 2000. A Systems Thinking Framework for Knowledge .

5 : Sunassee & Sewry, 2003 An Investigation of Knowledge Management Implementation Startegy proceedings of SAICSIT 24-36

Wednesday, 18 February 2009

ROLE OF IT IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

The key for a successful I.T involvement in any knowledge management system is deciding the type of IT deployed in the knowledge management system.

The growing importance of knowledge as a critical business resource has made executives to examine the knowledge underlying their businesses, giving rise to knowledge management systems. Advances in IT have made it easier to acquire, store, or disseminate knowledge than ever before, many organizations are employing IT to facilitate sharing and integration of knowledge. Executives must often confront the challenging task of deciding what type of IT solutions to deploy in support of their KM systems. These lines are the basic criteria for IT deployment in any knowledge management systems.
There are two basic approaches to KM for which IT can provide support: codification and personalization.

Codification: Here more explicit and structured knowledge is codified and stored in knowledge bases. The main role of IT here is to help people share knowledge through common storage so as to achieve reuse of knowledge.
Example: Electronic knowledge repositories (EKR) : like knowledge is stored in an EKR from where the employees can share the knowledge through a common source so as it is available to one and all and can be also reused whenever knowledge is required .

Personalization: Here more tacit and unstructured knowledge is shared largely through direct personal communication. The main role of IT here is to help people locate each other and communicate facilitate and to achieve complex knowledge transfer.
Example : Knowledge expert directories and videoconferencing .here the knowledge is mainly unstructured and is achieved with personal communication between the members of an organization and by using IT tools such as video conferencing makes the complex knowledge relatively simpler to gain or maybe understand .

The various organizations deploying IT in their knowledge management systems can be classified as Product based and Service based organizations.

The product based and service based organizations have different competitive bases ,like we can say that in Product based organizations competition does not lie only in the products but also in the services and the marketing for the product . Therefore we can say that in such organizations knowledge can be gained from various areas and utilize in the right way to gain competitive advantage over other organizations.
Example: Microsoft produces software products and operates in rapidly changing environments where the rate of innovation and speed of new product development is crucial,
So here technical knowledge should be gained by the product development teams before the launch of the products and then the knowledge should also be provided to the sales team so as to gain competitive advantage.
Likewise in a Service based organization the competition depends mainly on the services offered.
Example : We can take the example of Blue Dart which is a courier service organization it has a clear viewpoint that it is mainly considered with the services provided by them that is the delivery is delivered on date and to the right place.


REFERENCE: A. Kankanhalli,Sutanto J ,and Bernard C.Y.Tan (2003), Communications of the ACM , ACM ,Volume 46 Issue 9 .

Wednesday, 11 February 2009

K.M Theory and Concepts

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT THEORY AND CONCEPTS



KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT......

After reading an article in the JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT . I came to a conclusion that in order to make an organization become more adaptive, innovative, intelligent and sustainable in the market it should have appropriate management of knowledge . And i can also came to one important conclusion that it is very important for organizations to know about the knowledge and use them to appropriate level in order to gain competitive advantage ,which was supported by the work of (Wong and Aspinwall, 2005). AND I agreed with the defination that
"Knowledge Management is getting the right information to the right people at the right time"

I agree to this because as i believe that knowledge is gain through experience and if some one has the right knowledge in context with his organizations it is already giving an organization a head start or you can even say a competitve advantage over other organizations , and as mentioned right time is also very important because it is of no use if it is aquired at the wrong time. I can herby say that knowledge management can give an organization the essential boost that is required for an organization to do good in the market like if an organization has the needed experience and is having good knowledge management systems it will clearly achieving its target if it is effeciently managed in context with the individual and the team and also again with the organization as a whole .

for example>>>
It can be kept in context with my organization as i was completely new to this organization i needed the right knowledge in order to understand how thus this organization functions and what do the various information given to me by my team suggests me about the organization as a whole and so that i could start working with them as a team and the right time was of utmost important because it is of no use if i am given the advanced knowledge of the organizations work even before i know the basics.

Reference : {Wong, K.Y. and Aspinwall, E. (2004), (2005), "Characterizing knowledge management in the small business environment" Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 44-61. }



DATA .....

As I started working on the misuse of terms ,I personally felt that data and information are the same . Now I am cleared that " Data are the distinct pieces of an information "

examples-->> numbers and texts, bits ,bytes etc

Data can also be dfined as (facts and statistics used for reference or analysis )
Reference : Oxford dictionary

Like if we take in context with our organization data is all the input that each member of our organization get at team meetings i.e their individual perception.



INFORMATION.....

Information can be well described as the collection of data . Like we know by now that data are distinct pieces of information i.e. that when this distinct pieces are arranged in a particular way they provide us with the information .
It can be defined as (knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact .)

Reference : www.Dictionary.com

It can be said as we input our data in the group meeting of our organization it is at that maybe information for me but at the same time data for others ,so in order to make it a useful information for the organization we process the data with the organization perceptive and then this information is used .

examples>> weather report submited by the weather department

Sunday, 25 January 2009

DEFINATION OF ORGANIZATIONS

ORGANIZATIONS

"Organisations are social arrangements for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals”

Reference --(Huczynski, Andrzej and Buchanan, David, (2001) "Organisational Behaviour, An Introductory Text", 4th Edition, Prentice Hall, page 5)

It can be hereby understood that organisations are social arrangements of like minded people who share their information to acheive a similar goal . but this can only be acheived when the organization is able to constantly interact with the world around it as it is said that they do not operate in a vacuum .

Like in an organization there is a group of the head honchos of an organization who sit down and discuss the various aspects in the organization and then they make arrangements in order to fulfill the various aspects and then they set up a particular goal or target and then these arrangements are passed on to the next level that are the managers and then it is passed to the employees who implement those strategies in order to acheive the goal that was set up by the head honchos .
This is a triangle through which the communication is done within the organization to share the knowledge and achieve the desired goal.

Here I can give you an example of a car manufacturing organization that works on the term 'import-transformation-export' here these terms are the basic work like the car plant imports various resources from its envoirnment such as materials, component parts ,storage facilities ,staff to run the factory and the energy to provide heating and lightning and run the machinery , the car plant then transforms these resources in to vehicles which then are exported to a dealer who then sells it to the public .

an Example of such a vehicle manufacturing organization is the HERO HONDA which has a defined goal to be the largest two wheeler organization in South Asia in the next 10 years .

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE





--->>> COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE




--->>> THE KEYS FOR COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE